Airborne and satellite remote thermal sensing of the ground has been widely used for various change detection applications, such as agriculture. The remote sensors detect differences in temperature across the surface of the earth. The sensed temperatures are then converted into images used by the change detection applications. FIG. 1 illustrates an example image generated by prior art remote sensing systems. The image in FIG. 1 is a resized or zoomed-in view produced by a Land Remote Sensing Satellite Program (LANDSAT-7) satellite operated by NASA. The thermal images produced by prior known methods are useful primarily in low resolution applications.
It would be desirable to provide thermal images for high resolution applications. However, there exists an unmet need for generating remotely sensed thermal images at higher resolutions to provide more accurate interpretation of thermal data.